Adorno rejected Hegel’s rationality thesis as a capitulation to unreason

Evidence

For him, a philosophy which continues to view reality as rational ‘only veils reality and eternalizes its present condition’. Hegel’s verdict that ‘[w]hat is rational is actual; and what is actual is rational’ – in Adorno’s words, an imperative justified with reason ‘to capitulate before reality’ – is categorical, and claims to be valid independently from all historical and social variables in order to permanently brand any critique of existing conditions as unreasonable. In contrast, Adorno regards the notion that history teleologically propels itself towards the realisation of a reason contained within itself as foolish in light of irrational reality. ‘Not by interpreting thehistoricalprocessasanirresistiblepowerpressingtowardamessianicbreak with the present’, as in History and Class Consciousness, ‘but by focusing on the breaks, the gaps within the present – here was where Adorno saw the hope of a new future, but never its guarantee’. — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 185

Categorization

• XREF: Connects directly to the classical debate over Hegel’s ‘what is rational is actual’ formula and to Lukács’s History and Class Consciousness, the central interlocutor in Adorno’s political-economy critique. — connects to: The Institut rejected Weber’s formal rationality in favor of substantive rationalism — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 400; Adorno faulted Hegel for treating the bourgeois individual as an irreducible reality — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 834; Adorno rejected both Hegelian absolute spirit and Lukácsian proletarian totality grasp. — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 183 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Adorno rejected both Hegelian absolute spirit and Lukácsian proletarian totality grasp. #expands (0.85) — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 183
• Adorno rejected idealist reconciliation of class antagonism as evading objective social causes #complicates (0.80) — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 236